The organizers of the annual Los Angeles gay pride have announced that this year’s march will be replaced by a protest against President Donald Trump.
Local West Hollywood news outlet wehoville.com revealed late last that “the annual pride parade has been canceled, ceding to the nationwide LGBT Resist March that is scheduled in many U.S. cities for Sunday, June 11, the day the Los Angeles pride parade would normally occur.”
There will still be a smaller “Pride Festival,” which will be smaller than usual for non-political reasons: West Hollywood Park, the traditional venue for the event, will be under renovation.
In a press statement, Christopher Street West, the organization that stages L.A. Pride Parade and Festival, said: “Given the current political climate where divisiveness and discrimination continue to be part of mainstream dialogue, CSW is determined to make the LA Pride brand a unifying force for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies across all of Los Angeles. ”
West Hollywood’s culture of tolerance, however, has been tested by the rise of Donald Trump. Though Trump has been quite sympathetic to gay rights, and has inspired a vocal group of gay supporters, he has been rejected by gay activists inclined to regard any Republican as a potential threat, and hostile to the notion of states’ rights on issues they consider fundamental.
A local official tried to ban Trump from West Hollywood last year, and a woman assaulted a Trump supporter in a local restaurant.
There are “a quarter-million to a half-million people expected to participate in the march,” wehoville.com reports. LAist.com adds that some gay rights activists are excited about politicizing the parade. It quotes organizer Brian Pendleton, via Queerty: “We want to resist apathy. We want to resist having our rights rolled back by an unenlightened administration. And we want to be all-inclusive. We want to make sure that it’s everyone in the rainbow spectrum out there being represented.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.